BP Emergency Services Building

Whiting, Ind.

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Project Scope

Graycor worked alongside BP, A/E firm exp. and key trade partners to complete the project using an Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) model. Fruitful collaboration between the entire project team began very early on in the project and was key to the overall success of the BP EMS project.

Designed to resist gas intrusion and exposure to overpressures the ESB, together with an older structure recently converted into an office facility, forms the core of a series of facilities planned by BP, complementing the City of Whiting Indiana’s Lakefront Master Plan. This 36,000-square-foot facility consists of a new Administrative wing housing the refinery’s Fire and Security Departments with an Apparatus Bay for 16 individual pieces of fire-fighting/emergency service vehicles.

The Administrative wing is designed to service as a “shelter-in-place” affording a sustainable environment for the inhabitants in an event requiring the shut-down of the facility’s mechanical system’s fresh air intakes, which would automatically activate an interior mounted air scrubber. The stout structure is appropriately designed for the industrial environment in which it resides.

The Apparatus Bay is equipped with 12 automatically opening and closing blast doors that operate in a “folding door” manner for quick opening and closing. The doors were engineered and tested to operate after an overpressure event so that emergency vehicles can respond to refinery events in a short amount of time. The interior is fully equipped to provide basic maintenance services to the multiple emergency vehicles year round. The entire facility has been designed with systems that allow for continuous training of the emergency services personnel, both in a classroom environments and hands on.